1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to communication links including, but not limited to, serial interfaces for integrated circuits.
2. Description of the Background Art
High-speed communication links using serial interface protocols are used to communicate data between devices in a system. Examples of industry-standard protocols for high-speed input/output (HSIO) links include those related to PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), XAUI (X Attachment Unit Interface), sRIO (serial Rapid IO), and many others.
Power delivery network (PDN) noise couples through power rails to transceiver channels and degrades channel performance due to increased jitter and reduced eye openings. PDN noise often surges when signals through transceiver circuit blocks excite PDN resonances. In addition, the sharing of the power delivery network among multiple transceiver blocks causes undesired channel-to-channel power noise coupling. As the serial links approach speeds of 20 gigabits per second (Gbps) and above, PDN noise often has a substantial impact on transceiver channel performance.
A conventional approach to reducing PDN noise focuses on physical design implementations. For example, PDN impedances may be controlled by adding an on-die and/or an on-package decoupling capacitance, or by reducing package inductance by increasing package layer counts.